Do you think a belief in reincarnation is becoming more mainstream among Americans?

I think very much so. The Gallup polls taken in the mid-1970s and mid-80s show that approximately 24% of the American adult population believes in reincarnation. This is a remarkable statistic, given that medical, academic, and scientific institutions generally have not supported that belief.

A fairly recent Gallup poll--I believe in 1999--indicated that over 20% of the people who self-identify as Christians believe in reincarnation. What do you think is going on?

Several things. One thing is that people are slowly becoming aware of the high caliber of evidence that supports reincarnation. Not only Ian Stevenson's extraordinary studies with children, but also therapeutic evidence and the large number of clinical psychologists who are doing past life therapy. That discipline has matured a great deal over the past twenty-five years.

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Another thing is that reincarnation opens up a new avenue within which to view the problem of suffering.

You're saying a belief in reincarnation helps us understand the existence of suffering and evil?

What it does is expand exponentially our understanding of how much time we have to refine and perfect the life process. As a teacher, how much knowledge I can expect a student to demonstrate on a test or paper is directly related to how much time I give them to perform it. If it's a one-hour test, I can expect a certain caliber of response. With a two-hour exam, I have higher expectations. If by reincarnation you expand the idea that we have not a hundred years, but millions of years--

To become good people?

I think that's too narrow. By expanding our temporal horizon, it expands the horizon of what the creative project is all about. Clearly there's the problem of suffering and the sense that life somehow can get twisted along the way. If we approach that phenomenon within a reincarnation perspective, we can see that some challenges, wounds or hardships leave such a mark on the soul that they contract or twist the soul in a way that might not be fully resolved within one lifetime. It might take several lifetimes to resolve and work that out.